Reaching 'the Vulnerable' by Working from the Heart

Community Case Workers in Zimbabwe

Bibliographic Data

ID4380161
AuthorsSaana Hansen (0000-0002-2556-0704, PhD Researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland [email protected], corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume40
Issue2
Pages54-71
Publication date2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-7674 • E-ISSN: 2047-7716
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/cja.2022.400205
OpenAlexW4295957402
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

This article considers how the image of a caring state is both performed and contested by the actual workings of Zimbabwe's volunteer community case workers (CCWs). According to their policy mandate, the volunteers' commitment to registering 'the vulnerable' and mobilising them for different welfare project purposes is based on an assumed affective closeness to their communities. Ethnographic investigation also identifies community-level care work as an affectively and economically charged field, where the CCWs navigate conflicting expectations and utilise their connectedness to other welfare providers to sustain life. As diversely situated, community-level, caring bureaucrats, they also assist their 'cases' to construct claims of vulnerability that fit the narrow categories of welfare organisations, recognising and addressing forms of vulnerability that go beyond such definitions from the outside. In such processes, the credibility of both welfare institutions and CCWs is challenged and reproduced

Closeness · Computer security · Credibility · Mandate · Political science · Public relations · Situated · Social connectedness · Sociology · Welfare · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice

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Open DOIOpen Access